Tales of Symphonia Hands-On

The Japanese release of Tales of Symphonia marks a major milestone for the GameCube: the first full-scale original Japanese RPG for the system (Eternal Arcadia doesn't count). Not only that, but it's a major RPG series at that -- the third most popular in Japan. And a three hour playtest of the final import confirms that Namco's newly formed Tales Studio went all out with this latest entry.

Tales of Symphonia brings with it many familiar elements from previous entries in the series, most importantly the trademark "Linear Motion Battle" system. Battles in the Tales series are heavily action-influenced. You have direct control over the main character, moving him back and forth and selecting attacks via direct command inputs. Other characters are left to computer control, but you can set their attack behavior to several default strategy options. You can also pause the action to input magic spells and item use via a menu.

In previous games in the series, the battles took place on a flat 2D scrolling playfield. Symphonia has no such limitation with its move to full 3D. The battle system featured in Symphonia is called the Multi-Line Linear Motion Battle system, and as the name may indicate, characters and enemies are no longer on a single line -- they're now scattered about a flat 3D playfield. However, characters are always locked onto a particular enemy and all attacks and movement is with respect to that enemy. You control your character just as you did in previous games, moving back and forth along a straight line, only now when you switch between enemies, your character will end up moving in different directions.

The battles now look like battles from the Grandia series, with characters and enemies running about all over the place, shouting out as they directly attack enemies. It's frantic and full of energy, and very much fun to watch. Of course, the fact that you're directly controlling your character's actions makes Symphonia a different beast from the Gamearts masterpiece. Compared to previous entries in the Tales, series, we'd say that the movement to a fully 3D playfield makes the battles easier to comprehend and therefore control.

Players explore detailed towns and dungeons.

You actually are in more control over the battles than ever before thanks to the added number of strategic options you have. You can set the AI characters to behave in very specific ways, determining when and how often they use skills, how they move and how they attack enemies. Each of these three areas offers up to 9 options depending on a character's class (as characters gain experience, they gain new classes which can be switched between in the menu screens). There's much added complexity and control to the battle system with the new strategic options, and we welcome it all, having recently played the relatively simple Tales of Phantasia port on the Game Boy Advance. Of course, you won't need to worry about computer AI if you have four controllers hooked up to the system as human players can then control your allies.